


O, Death

by mortemissary (corvobiancos)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Original Fiction, Short Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 17:11:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10746168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvobiancos/pseuds/mortemissary
Summary: A naïve young woman has just committed suicide after suffering from untreated clinical depression and finds herself speaking to the Grim Reaper, who offers her a job.





	O, Death

Sarah opened her eyes, or at least she was pretty sure she did. Everything around her was just as dark as it had been when her eyes had fallen closed, save for a thin grey mist hovering around her. She was standing up now with that mist floating delicately up to her ankles; it looked as if someone had left a smoke machine on, and it was somehow filling an infinite expanse of nothingness. Sarah glanced around, trying to find some kind of landmark to get her bearings, but there was literally nothing but herself there.

At least until an impatient voice said behind her: “ _You look like an idiot._ ”

It startled her, making a sharp yelp leave her. Her head darted to look over her shoulder at a looming figure clad in an ivory suit. Unbothered by her outburst, the man continued, “You look like you’re watching tennis. Some of us are on schedules ‘ere.” He had an...English accent? All she could really think of was that he sounded like the villain in a movie. Caustic and pompous with a hint of posh. He let a heavy silence pass before rolling his eyes, pinching his nose, and speaking again. “...Well? Any questions? Comments? Queries? Final pleas for resurrection?”

Again, she remained silent. She half-expected the man to offer her a hand to stand up, but even if he _did_ have the decency to take a hand out of one of those pockets, she wasn’t sure her legs were ready to stand just yet. So she was condemned to the ground, looking up at him. Something about it seemed oddly fitting.

He continued, “...No? Nothing?”

“Wh — Who are you?”

“Really? You’re going to waste your time on ridiculous questions like that?” he paused, seeing the genuine look of confusion and offense before letting out a dramatic sigh. “ _Fine,_ ” he said through the rush of air from his throat, “You may call me _Grim._ Preferably the Grim Reaper. Also Charon, Nergal, Nephthys...I’ve been the one scooping you lot up when your soul loses its tether to the mortal plane and sending you off to where you need to be for the rest of eternity.”

“Is this Heaven?”

“More like _Purgatory,_ ” Grim scoffed, “I wouldn’t be so sure you’re off to the good place just yet, luv. On a scale of one to ten on the universe’s scale of good, I’d say you’re a _six_ at most. Remember that stint in middle school when you were a _massive_ arsehole? You weren’t even one of the _popular_ ones, Sarah. You were just a prick.” He laughed while the young woman averted her eyes, embarrassed.

“Now I’ll give you one more chance to start asking some more _interesting_ questions, or if you want we can just skip to the fun part where I get to toss you down to Hell.”

She gasped sharply.

“I’m only kidding!” Grim shrugged, “I wouldn’t just _tell_ you where you’re going like that. It ruins the surprise.”

Sarah, still a bit weak, mulled over a few ideas in her head. There was the classic myriad of questions for how death worked and what culture was right in the end. An educated discourse on morality might make her look smarter; get her to tip the odds in her favor...but given how impatient he seemed to be, she kept it simple. Kind of. “So who was right?”

“About death? Everyone. And no one. Little bits here and there have it spot on, like the Grim Reaper legend, obviously,” Grim shrugged, tone causal. He’d probably heard that one every time.

“Do you come for every soul?”

“Not every soul. Only special cases like yours where the balance between your good deeds and bad are almost in perfect equilibrium. I pick you up _personally_ to give you one last chance to negotiate your way to the good place. I’m not some omnipotent presence, nor would I want to be. Can you imagine having to go to _millions_ of different homicide scenes? Having to deal with picking up every self-righteous whackjob that is convinced that just by having their particular faith alone they’re destined to the good place? In reality their hatred of those that don’t fit their cookie cutter condemns them to eternal punishment! The first few were fun, don’t get me wrong. But every single one? No thank you.” Grim laughed, holding two gloved hands up in mock surrender, “Same goes for all those terminally ill ones. At least by having other reapers _that_ kind of depressing workload gets spread around so _all_ of us get to feel like shit for a few minutes every day.”

Sarah blinked.

“I can’t be _everywhere_ at once. People are dying all the time, all over the world. I’d go insane. Of course I have employees. Even _I_ outsource jobs...I’m just the _most important_ reaper out there.” He flashed her a grin.

She moved to try standing, and he finally removed a hand from his pocket. When she took it, she felt as if she had grabbed hold of a block of ice in the shape of a man’s hand...like if she had held on much longer, she might lose a few fingers. The instant Sarah was on her feet, he let go. She wobbled, but had to gain her balance on her own. Grim seemed to harbor some kind of disdain. Maybe not for her _specifically,_ but maybe for mortal beings in general.

“You have…” he unbuttoned his suit jacket to check a pocketwatch clipped to the vest he wore underneath, “...about _ten_ minutes before I have to be at an assassination in Liechtenstein.”

“I...I don’t really know what else to ask.”

“Come on — you’ve lain in bed wondering about all this at some point. Everyone does. _Especially_ suicides like you.”

The fact that she was standing there talking to the personification of death had her confused enough, and to have to form some kind of existential question was just asking a bit too much.

Grim continued, “You can even ask me what my favorite _color_ is, if you like.” He left a short silence before answering his own question. “It’s _aubergine,_ in case you _were_ wondering,” he continued, pointing at the dark purple tie around his neck. But her continued silence made him roll his eyes once more. He continued, “Look, you’re not the first. I extend this little opportunity at conversation as a courtesy, especially when I’m feeling pensive. _‘What’s the point’_ and all that. Give you lot some answers the big guys won’t tell you.”

Sarah gazed down at her feet. She tried remembering _how_ she had gotten there. What it had felt like. How much blood had pooled on the linoleum. Did anyone find her? “...Why can’t I…” she fumbled for the word, “...r—remember what happened?”

“ _Finally_ you make it interesting!” He clapped his hands together, a grin plastered on his lips. “ _That_ , my dear, is an interesting one.” he snapped his fingers, and some of the darkness oozed away like ink in water. She saw herself in a bathroom mirror, cheeks stained with tears as she clutched a Swiss Army knife in one hand. Grim turned to glance at it. “I’m _sure_ you know what happens next.”

He waved a hand across the image, the scene fast-forwarding through her slicing her forearms wide open. The image he’d now presented Sarah with was her sitting against the wall with the note in her other hand. She’d even folded the blade into the hilt once she was done. For an instant, she remembered the feeling of slicing through raw meat. “So? I _know_ I killed myself for sure. It’s everything else—”

“Didn’t your mother teach you anything about being patient?” he frowned, pointing at the image, “Speak of the devil; ‘ere she comes.”

Sarah watched more intently, noticing the curtain in the bathroom was fluttering with the breeze wafting in — her mother had always warned her about leaving the window open. If it hadn’t been for the water overflowing from the sink onto the linoleum, she would have thought Grim had paused the image. But no, a moment after he’d spoken there was a loud banging on the bathroom door. The rhythm lasted for a minute or so until it stopped. Then it was thrown open, splinters scattering from the lock before her father’s shoe appeared. Her parents’ looks of sheer horror struck a chord within her. She hadn’t even _thought_ about how they would react in that moment. It had slipped her mind.

Grim must have seen her face, because he commented, “Well, no going back _now._ You’ve done the damage.”

“I…”

“ _You didn’t know?_ ” he scoffed, “—You’re a dreadful liar. _Of course_ you knew.” He snapped his fingers and said nothing more, instead letting the sound on the image play. It was startling at first, her mother’s wail catching Sarah off guard. She jumped, ignoring Grim’s little chuckle. But something about him seemed different, as if he didn’t really think it was all that amusing.

He let it go on a _little_ longer, a minute-long display of two parents doing _everything_ they could do to bring their daughter back. Unfortunately she was already gone, stuck — wherever _here_ was with the Reaper himself.

“ _How much longer?_ ” she blurt out, shutting her eyes. However, he clapped his hands together and they were forced open.

“Until you really _see_ what you’ve done,” he snapped, no longer keeping any of the lighthearted, patronizing tone he’d had before. “ _This_ right here is why taking your own life is a sin in most cultures’ eyes,” Grim continued, anger flaring up in his eyes, “Look at what you do to your loved ones — your bloody _parents!_ — Oh, hold on, it gets _better._ ” Something about the way he emphasized the final word had her worried. The only thing that came to mind was…

...Her sister peered in from the door, hand resting absently on the splinters where the lock had once been. It was that very image that made Sarah’s breath hitch in her throat. Even for all their arguments, the little girl’s confusion and fear made Sarah feel sick to her stomach, disgusted with the fact that she’d thought that this was all a good idea. That no one would miss her. Her sister looked up to her, and she got to see the latter’s corpse lying in its own blood, the insides of the forearms little more than gaping sanguine holes...All before Sarah could legally vote.

She hoped to God her sister wouldn’t suffer the same debilitating self-hatred that Sarah ultimately couldn’t overcome. She saw the fifth-grader’s eyes and wanted to go back and undo _everything._ Maybe she could be the one of the lucky people who would come back from the dead. She could deal with some nasty scars on her arms if it meant her sister didn’t lose a role model. Someone to copy old essays from. Someone to get advice from.

But now an _eleven-year-old girl_ was gazing upon a dead body while her mother tried everything they could to get Sarah to wake up and her father had 9-1-1 on the phone.

If someone said ‘ _make a wish,’_ she would have wished to go back and snatch that multi-tool from her own hand before she fucked up royally.

“I…” She couldn’t even form a sentence.

Grim had calmed down, but the disappointment he felt was abundantly clear. She felt like she’d let her own father down rather than the Grim Reaper. He said, _“What’s done is done, Miss Ward.”_

She _knew_ where she was going now, and even swore she smelled _brimstone_ in the air between them. So this was what it was all about: make her suffer before sending her down to the pits of hell.

“You were never a _wholly_ terrible person,” he continued, engulfing the image in darkness once more. “Just wrong about a few things. You were _never_ a burden on your family. Your family _will_ miss you. Your sister lost a role model an hour ago. She’s going to have to get ready for school in a few days and your parents will have to go through your things sooner or later. You can’t live in a house for seventeen years and _not_ leave a mark on everyone you knew. Not to mention that you’ve left almost twenty years of belongings for them to sift through once they’ve got the funeral in order. You’re not _gone_ just like that.”

Sarah had tried staring at her toes, but found herself looking back up at him. “I have to go back.”

“We’ve been _over_ this. What’s done is done.”

“There _has_ to be a way. I didn’t...I can’t let my sister see that.”

The Reaper sighed impatiently. “I don’t have a bloody time machine like Time does. I’m on the same linear timeline as you are—ergo, it’s _impossible_ for you to get back.”

“Then put me back in my body.”

“Again: can’t do that either. No one gets to come here and go back like nothing happened. Why do you think that the afterlife _still_ remains a mystery?”

“Then what the fuck _can_ you do?!” She suspected she already knew the answer to that question: _‘Nothing.’_

He frowned at her outburst. “— I don’t let anyone speak to me like that, Miss Ward. You’re down to a _five_ for that.”

“Oh my God, you’re _fucking_ kidding me!”

“—Four. And as for God...well, he hasn’t a hand in much of anything for millennia,” he continued, tone emulating a parent disciplining a belligerent child.

Sarah opened her mouth to say something else, but instead settled for showing him her middle finger. This was met with Grim flashing her a disappointed glance that said it all: _‘Three.’_

“You’re not really _getting_ this, are you?” He frowned, crossing his arms across his chest.

“ _You’re_ just being sensitive.”

Grim sighed, “I’m _trying_ to make you realize that _I_ have all the power here. And _with_ that power I can send you down to damnation with just a snap of my fingers.”

“—Just because I annoyed you?”

“You’ve already kept me here for twice as long as you should have. My next victim is going to be haunting the embassy for a bit longer than intended.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Then just get this over with.”

“I was _going_ to tell you there was a way to avoid it before you decided to act like a child. This is all up to me, and you never another’s life. You never stole anything more than a pencil. Nothing that would justify an eternity surrounded by people who _have_ indulged in that lifestyle,” he paused, taking a deep breath, “However, there _is_ a way that you can avoid it. You’re not good enough for the good place, but this would allow you to avoid unfair punishment. It’s often the path that the morally grey tend to end up on after passing.”

“...You mean a ghost?” Sarah deadpanned as she peered again into the mist far below.

“Not _quite._ I...hire you. The hours are terrible: twenty-four-seven, no holidays and no dental. But maybe, after a few millennia you'll at least _feel_ like you've made up for being a little brat,” Grim pinched and pulled a couple of the fingers of his glove away, pausing to finish, “Your time’s up. Time to decide. _Hell, or servitude._ ”

She watched him pull the leather glove off, revealing a hand lacking all skin and muscle. He offered it toward her, fingers curling a bit so it looked more ominous.

“Chop-chop, Miss Ward.”

Sarah reached toward his outstretched hand. “—Seems a bit harsh.”

“I said _chop-chop._ Enough stalling.”

“Fine—” she took his hand, and he tightened his grip. “Do I get a scythe?”


End file.
